Windmill Playground

A few weeks ago we heard about a fun park in a town not to far from us. We had to check it out!

It is the Windmill Playground at Frontier Park in Prosper.

It was warm and they still had the water misters turned on! Of course this was one of Grace's favorite things. There was a small splash pad but we didn't have any extra clothes so we stayed away from that this time.

 There is a section for toddlers that we explored first.

Then we headed over to the area for the bigger kids.

Grace loved the tight rope!

Olivia likes to join the big kids in all the fun and found a little girl and followed her all over. They climbed to the top of the playground and went down this slide over and over!

Recently Grace has been wanting her picture taken every time she finds one of these photo ops. She wasn't too sure about this one at first though because it looked like a BOY! We decided that it must be a girl farmer wearing overalls because she was working in the hay.

And we couldn't leave without swinging!!! 

 

We have been back once and I am sure we will be back lots more.

Dentist

We made it back from NY just in time for Halloween. And after Halloween the girls had a dentist appointment. What great timing, huh?

Grace was so excited to visit the dentist. She took one if her Tinkerbell dolls to watch as she got her teeth cleaned. After she got X-rays of her teeth she wanted to show Tinkerbell the picture on their computer monitor! She sat so still and was such a big girl.

Olivia doesn't really like to have her teeth brushed. She likes to do it herself. But she liked sitting in the chair watching a movie on the iPad. I realized later they had tv's mounted above the chairs and had the Lorax playing the whole time.

Both girls got their picture taken with the huge toothbrush for the "no cavity club" wall.

Hopefully Olivia won't bite the dentist when they go back in 6 months!

Hurricane Sandy

I want to write about this because in a few years it might be funny to look back on.

We were visiting New York right before the hurricane was forecasted to hit. We thought it would hit after we left. We got to where we were staying just North of New York city and saw the news. It was supposed to hit earlier than we had originally saw. It was now scheduled to hit the day we were to fly out.

The next day it looked worse so we decided that instead of having a canceled flight and then waiting on stand-by for another flight we would just rent a car and drive. Monday morning Dustin traded the rental car we had for another one (it was less expensive to do it this way for some reason even though we got the same type of car) then he picked us up and we hit the road.

At one point we decided to take a more northern route even though it was longer to miss some winter weather on the route we had planned to take.

Here is a picture of the weather map of what we were driving through.

 

We drove 16.5 hours the first day and 11 the second day. We were all very glad to get home!

 

West Point

We made the 6 hour drive from Niagara Falls to West Point so we could visit Dustin's old school and see some of his family and friends.

We drove onto West Point Saturday morning for the football game. The first thing we saw when we came in the gate was the new prep school campus. Dustin attended the prep school when it was in New Jersey but it has recently been relocated.

At the game we saw cadets from his old company and got a picture with their mascot - the G4 Guppy!

 

We sat with the band for a little while and it was good to see them doing some of the same things that they were doing when Dustin was there. But the band is very loud so we moved to our seats to watch the game.

We got to spend some time exploring the campus. Grace's favorite part was the leaves of course!

 This is the bridge where Dustin proposed.

 And the fall colors over the reservoir were beautiful.

While Olivia was napping in the car I took some pictures of Grace enjoying all of the leaves that were on the ground.

It was nice to be able to go back after more than 5 years and see good friends and family!

Niagara Falls

Dustin had another business trip. This time he was in Rochester, NY. We decided that I would fly up with the girls at the end of the week and we would make it into a little vacation. 

I headed to the airport with the girls on Thursday and met Dustin in NY. This was the first time the girls had both flown together and they were great on the flight.  Getting into the airport with 2 carseats, the stroller, and our bag and carry-on was the hardest part of the entire trip.

As soon as Dustin was finished on Friday we made the 1.5 hour drive to Niagara Falls. We walked around the American side for a bit.

The girls spotted a gray squirrel! In our part of the country squirrels are brown.

On the American side we could get pretty close to the falls.

 Olivia checking it out

 

Grace had fun trying to catch the falling leaves. She really got to see how leaves change colors and fall off of the tree in the fall.

 

Then we found the bridge and walked to Canada.

 

Our first stop once in Canada was the Hershey store. I think this was Grace's favorite store ever! 

 They picked out some candy as a souvenir.

 

From Canada you could see the entire waterfall! It was really pretty and I think it was probably a great time to be there because we got to see the fall colors as well.

After we saw everything we wanted to see it was time to hit the road.

Pumpkin Patch

One Saturday in October we visited a The Big Orange Pumpkin Farm in Celina, TX.

With our admission we each got a cup of food for the animals. Grace fed the sheep but then decided that wasn't her thing and so she let Olivia have the rest of the food.

 

Olivia loved feeding the goats!

Grace was tired of feeding the animals and wanted to check out the pumpkins and hay bales.

 She sat so still and smiled big for the camera!

Then Olivia joined us but she didn't want to sit and take her picture. She wanted to climb on the hay and the fence.

We let the girls pick out a pumpkin from the pumpkin patch.

Grace decided she would rather leave hers for another little girl or boy to take home. But she did want to go for a hay ride!

Halloween 2012

We had a great Halloween!

We started the day off by heading to the community center for our neighborhood playgroup Fall Fest. 

The girls had lots of fun jumping in the bounce house and painting pumpkins.

 

 That evening the girls put on their costumes and went trick or treating in our neighborhood. Almost everyone was passing out candy!

Olivia wasn't a fan of her costume at first but she quickly forgot about it once she started getting candy.

Dustin took the girls around our side of the neighborhood while I stayed home to pass out candy. We had quite a few kids come by and I think we will have more next year since there won't be construction on our block.